When I’m not sure what to do, my favorite thing to do is to get on a trail and see where it goes. This might mean leaving the house and going for a run, deliberately taking a new route. It might be as simple as exploring a new park. In the past, I’ve done this in the form of paddling a new river. Today, I’ll talk about it in terms of hiking a new long-distance trail.
I always feel better taking some form of action rather than existing in a state of motionless inertia. Generally speaking, going nowhere gets me nowhere, and doing nothing usually accomplishes nothing (though meditation and resisting immediate reaction are often useful and valid responses to life). If I sit still long enough, I’ll find a way to get lost in the worst corners of my own mind, so when I’m pondering life’s challenges, I ascribe to the “move a muscle, change a thought” practice and like to get in motion. Doing so on an unfamiliar path brings adventure. It forces me to be aware and entices me to be more present, because the present is now a new experience, not a road that I could travel blindfolded in my weariest of states.
Long-distance hiking is equal parts routine and adventure. I think it is this combination that makes it particularly appealing. I love the adventure of the “new unknown” – a new trail, starting at point A and ending at point B. Everything in between is new and fresh. Yet, long-distance hiking is simultaneously a very repetitive exercise of fairly discrete activities. Its repeatable simplicity adds great attraction to its adventurous veil. My only task, day in and day out, is to wake up, hike, find water, drink, eat, sleep, and repeat. Everything gets boiled down to the simplest aspects of daily living. It is not without schedule, as I inevitably have some mileage goals to make. But I get to set these goals based on my whims, or the trail sets them for me based on my own need for resources or replenishment. Connection with the outside world is not broken, but there is an understanding that I am “away from it all.” I am removed from the responsibility of immediate response to life’s various stimuli, and largely absolved of any delayed response to major events I may still be connected to. It’s a “hall pass” that is rare to come by in wired society these days. All I have to do is repeat a simple routine, and I will have enough adventure to make every day fulfilling in its own unique way. And then, eventually, I reach my destination.
I find that quite often I’m not sure what to do; therefore, most of the time, I am interested in trails. Sometimes this is as simple as waking up on a free Saturday morning and not really having any kind of plan other than wanting to do something outside. It could also be more about the big picture of life. I don’t really know what I “want to do when I grow up,” and at 43, I’m getting tired of thinking about it. I don’t think it really matters, and I’ve learned that too much future planning can come at the cost of the present. You know – the time in which I’m actually alive. I want to think about what I want to do now. In my past, I’ve spent too much time thinking about the future. I’m now literally living in the future of past plans, thoughts, and dreams. We only have so many fast forwards until the proverbial tape is over. And so I found myself, having just quit my job again (I wrote about this in my last post), planning another long hike on a new trail: the Benton MacKaye Trail.
I have been wanting to thru-hike the Benton MacKaye Trail for a while now – for longer than I have known the correct pronunciation of its namesake’s surname (Mack-EYE, not Mack-AY). My interest in the trail began when I first started going to the Three Forks area just to car camp along Noontootla Creek. Most of these spots, if not all, are now closed for camping due to overuse. But, back in the day when they were open, I would drive up with friends and spend the night along the majestic banks of the creek, full of rhododendrons and mountain laurels. It’s a special place, for sure, and carries a very “southeast Appalachian” feel. The Appalachian Trail and the Benton MacKaye Trail share the same path as they pass through Three Forks, which is the first gap after Springer Mountain. A one-mile hike from the forest road at Three Forks to Long Creek Falls is popular with locals and day hikers. The Appalachian Trail and Benton MacKaye Trail diverge right where a short side trail heads down to the falls. The AT continues north, and the BMT banks west towards the Toccoa River. When I first hiked the short section of trail to Long Creek Falls on one of those car camping trips, I wondered about the BMT. I knew of the Appalachian Trail, of course. I knew it went all the way to Maine. But where did the Benton MacKaye Trail go?
Later, when I got into paddling, I did a canoe trip down the Toccoa River and passed under the iconic, 270-foot long wooden swinging bridge that the BMT utilizes to cross the river on its way west towards Blue Ridge, GA. I did not know it was part of the BMT at the time, but later discovered this fact while planning an overnight backpacking trip with my wife. A trail with such a bridge must be adventurous indeed! My wife and I drove to Three Forks and hiked the 9 miles to the swinging bridge, spent the night, and hiked the 9 miles back the next day. I remember how quiet the BMT was once it veered away from the Appalachian Trail at Long Creek Falls. I liked it, and my interest officially peaked.
Fast forward years later and I would pass through Three Forks on my AT thru-hike. My first day on trail I deliberately hiked a rather long day, roughly 13 miles I think, just to get from the beginning of the approach trail to Three Forks. It was a special first night on trail, and ironically also a night on the BMT. Those initial seeds of interest in the BMT continued to grow until it officially went on my list of trails to thru-hike, which is an actual list that I keep.
I gave notice at my job in January, but didn’t actually finish hiring and training my replacement until April, so I had a long time during that transition period to think about what I would do first. The BMT just felt right in every way. I wasn’t immediately whisking off to be gone for 5 months hiking across the country, but at 290 miles, it was long enough to be an extended adventure and bring the feeling of freedom that comes with that. I would be able to see the spring wildflowers. I would see a different part of the Great Smoky Mountain National Park than I saw on my AT thru-hike, and see it in a different season. It was covered in snow and ice the only other time I had hiked through it. The BMT felt like a natural decision, so I started getting things in order for the hike. I needed to figure out all of the logistics, how to resupply, what permits were required, and everything that goes along with a hike like this. It’s a fun part of the process because it is always full of discovery and learning, and it creates a natural culmination of activities in preparation for a metaphorical space launch of sorts. I decided I would start my hike on April 30th, though this was largely driven by choosing an end date first.
The main logistical decisions to be made kind of made themselves for me. When to leave and whether to go northbound or southbound? My wife booked an Airbnb (because that’s a thing we say now – we often don’t describe lodging away from home by its structure or type of business anymore, like cabin, rental house, or motel, and instead just refer to it by the website we booked it on – how times have changed!) in Tennessee not too far from the BMT northern terminus on May 16, so it was an easy decision to hike north and to plan to finish on that date. A permit is required for backcountry camping in the Great Smoky Mountain National Park, and unlike the AT thru-hiker permit they have, you must book specific campsites and specific dates. So, I built a trip planner and worked out my mileage using the Guthook map app as a guide. I worked backwards from my May 16 end date and laid out a schedule based on hiking an average of 17 miles per day. I decided to stay on trail with the exception of one night at Fontana Lodge just before the Smokies. I mailed two boxes of food to myself at locations directly on trail. One was a gas station/outfitter called Webb Brothers in Reliance Tennessee and the other was Fontana Lodge. These resupply boxes, along with a stop at a cafe and small general store on day two, would be all the food I would need for the entire journey. I booked a shuttle with White Blaze Shuttle Services to Springer Mountain on April 30th, and planned to walk the 3.3 miles from the northern terminus of the trail to Interstate 40 on May 16 when I finished. My wife would conveniently pass by on I40 on her way to the Airbnb and could just scoop me up off the closest exit and we would continue on our way. It just kind of came together, so all I really had to do was focus on wrapping up work and not freaking out.
The only nuance when it came to prepping gear was that I also decided I wanted to put more work into capturing the experience on video. I enjoy story-telling and, in many ways, video and film cannot substitute for a written story. However, a written story also cannot show the actual experience unfolding, and I wanted to play around with doing that – story-telling but in video format. I felt like it would help bring the hike to life a bit more crisply, particularly for those who have never done a hike like this, or are actually considering hiking the BMT and want to get a feel for what it is really like. Of course, I also selfishly wanted to do it for myself. I made a casual VLOG style video series when I hiked the Continental Divide Trail, but for this hike I wanted to do something better. First, I don’t really like talking to the camera. I’m fairly awkward with a dry and dark sense of humor. I often lack facial expressions, at least appropriate ones, and I’m not about to win a Mr. America contest, so while I can do a VLOG, it wasn’t really what I wanted to do. I wanted to see if I could present a visual story without interrupting the visual experience with talking, and so I decided to film the hike as a “silent hiking film,” focusing on capturing the sights and sounds of the trail and my hike. I would then do a short, “behind the scenes” discussion and explanation after the respective episode to provide some detail about what was going on during that portion of the hike. The latter would obviously be my least favorite part, but would provide necessary context for the silent storytelling. So, I set about putting together a gear kit for this. It meant carrying more weight and more electronic “stuff,” which I wasn’t crazy about, but I’m now glad that I did because I am happy with the end result. If you want to check out this video series, the trailer and introduction episode just aired, and a new episode will follow each week on Mondays. It is quite different from my storytelling in this blog, which tends to go much deeper into what I was thinking about and observing along the way. You’ll see.
This BMT hike was going to be different from my other long hikes in a couple of important ways. First, I wouldn’t be writing while hiking. In fact, I had not yet committed mentally to writing about it at all. I had decided that I would write (i) only after the hike, (ii) only if I wanted to, and (iii) only if I felt that I had a story worth telling when it was all said and done. Obviously the third criteria is a bit ridiculous because beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but I guess I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t writing just because I felt like I “should” because I have a website and write blog posts for it sometimes, if that makes sense. It isn’t my livelihood or even an income stream at this point; I don’t have to do it. I should want to do it. In the past, while I have enjoyed writing on trail, I have found that it can feel like a chore or distraction at times. I typically do it at night, but then it can be hard to stay awake as well. Instead, on this trip I did nothing more than type the occasional note about something, taking no more than three minutes or so to do this, if I remembered at all. I found this sufficient to document what I wanted to remember and was able to fill in the rest quite easily.
In tandem, I was filming more than I had before. With my VLOG on the CDT it was really just casual filming of scenery, walking down trail, and myself talking, with little regard for artistic expression, storytelling, or the structuring of shots and potential transitions. There was little scene establishment or any of the other aspects of film that make it all come together. On this hike, I wanted to push myself to start doing some of that. I wanted a new creative outlet to play with, and the thought that I would have this beautiful adventure documented in a more thoughtful visual way definitely appealed to me. This would also be different though. Unlike writing after the fact, I would be filming throughout the hike, including setting up the camera hundreds and hundreds of times just to walk past it and back again to gather footage to move the story along. I wasn’t sure if this would distract too much from the overall experience. In the end, it largely did not. Funny enough, it actually made me stop and pause more, so I would often notice things because I stopped hiking to film, which I otherwise would have blown by. There were a lot of positives that came with the filming, most notably taking more time to appreciate things that I thought were cool. And, ultimately, if I wanted to just save something for myself in a particular moment, I just didn’t film it. For example, the hike into Reliance, TN early in the morning was absolutely stunning. I didn’t film any of it. A small part of me regretted it as I put the footage together, but in the moment, I just wanted to be present and immerse myself in that morning dappled sunlight, the banks of the creek I walked along, the crisp, cool air, and my stride.
This blend of video documentation, note taking, living in the moment, and my average pace of 17 miles per day worked quite well for me. I found that I had enough time to get to camp, mostly before dark, do all the filming I wanted to, and still feel relaxed and present. All other aspects of the hike aside, I feel like I really got the balance right on this one. Probably the most stressful aspect of the hike were the two solid days of thunderstorms I had early on. They were fairly intense, and I had the new experience of worrying about keeping my camera equipment dry, but we’ll get to that later.
As April 30th got closer, things felt a bit surreal. Whenever I am about to start another long-distance hike, I inevitably experience a moment where I suddenly get nervous and think to myself, “Ok, I guess I’m doing this…. Wait, do I really like doing this?” So far, without fail, I have experienced this mental pause. I was feeling this way even on April 29th as I packed my bag for an early morning departure. The irony is, the hard work was already done. I had left another “good” job after convincing myself that I was on the wrong path yet again and needed to work less and live more, like I had originally set out to do in 2018. I had waved goodbye to my income stream and insurance coverage. Walking was the easy part. In fact, walking was pretty much necessary at this point. If I didn’t go on some kind of adventure, what was it all for? If I had just flopped on the couch and watched Judge Judy all afternoon for weeks on end, I would have found myself in a whole different kind of state, and not the good kind. I was also really excited and felt fortunate. Another adventure! They say “fortune favors the bold.” At least from a Western perspective, and definitely from an American one, I think this most commonly is interpreted as economic fortune, since as a culture we tend to define success by economic benefit. For me, fortune is freedom, adventure, and experience. I actually think there is more of an opportunity for this idiom to end unrealized from an economic perspective. I personally know those who live voluntarily shackled by “golden handcuffs.” They have plenty of fortune, but boldness was replaced by assimilation and fear a long time ago. Fortunately enough, even if fortune does not favor the bold, it is never too late for one to be what one might have been. My personal experience is that if there is any ounce of life left in my boldness, it will return like the prodigal son, even long after I have failed it.
I woke up early on the morning of April 30. It was a Friday, the day after my Father’s birthday, and still a little chilly outside. I walked to the nearest MARTA train station here in Atlanta, and rode the train to Five Points station, where I changed to the northbound line. One of my favorite things to do at Five Points is to look for rats by the tracks. I don’t know why I get such joy out of seeing them down there. I don’t always spot one and did not on this morning, but in the past I often have. They scurry in and out of little hidey holes they have, looking for any bits of food or other useful things that might have been dropped on the tracks. If you are a Beverly Cleary fan, you might be inclined to picture a mouse sputtering alongside the tracks on a small, red motorcycle, maybe even with a whiskered passenger in a sidecar. But alas, no rats that day.
I caught the northbound train to North Springs and donned my mask inside the car. It was the first time I had taken the train since the pandemic started. I got to North Springs station quite early. I was supposed to meet my shuttle driver at 8am and it was about 7:40. I knew there was one other hiker on the shuttle, and it only took him about 10 seconds to spot me after I hopped off the train. We both looked the part. He was from California, had previously thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail, and was back to hike as much of the AT as he could in a two-month period. He was quite gregarious and I had to find a window to inject that I had a small issue to resolve before I could continue to trade tales of the trail. I’m 43, I’d had coffee and water, a long train ride, and there was no bathroom at the station…. And if there was a bathroom that I just hadn’t seen, I was now outside the gate. One of the few things that defines my 40s and separates them from my mid to late 30s is the ever present possible donning of what I call “pee pee pants.” Pee pee pants are invisible, but something I have no choice but to wear at all times. At any point in time, when the Gods of Age-based Embarrassment become bored, they like to flick a switch that activates my pee pee pants. This instantly takes me from cool, collected, and comfortable, to antsy and desperate with a look of crazed focus on my face that can only mean one thing – I’m GOING to find a place to go; it’s just a question of where. Fortunately, long-distance hiking and an active bladder have made me very resourceful, so I excused myself and ran out past the parking garage and around the corner to a shaded, bushy path between the road into the station and an apartment complex. No one was around, so I pushed my way deep into the loropetalum landscape and sighed into the clouds. You win this time Gods, you win this time. They win every time.
Our shuttle was hung up in traffic, which is basically the equivalent of a normal day in Atlanta. The traffic here is some of the worst in the nation, and a Friday morning trying to come into the city is not far removed from adjusting the trigger on a loaded gun while peering into the barrel. You just kind of know what you’re getting into. Our shuttle driver, Michelle, was super accommodating and took a detour to a local REI to help California get a fuel canister (one cannot fly with these). The trip to the parking lot near the top of Springer Mountain takes about 2 hours from north Atlanta. The time went quickly and, before I knew it, I was getting out of a Jeep and onto the trail.
It was cold and misty, and my first thought as soon as I got out of the Jeep was “I didn’t bring enough clothing.” But, it was too late at that point, and the reality was that I did have plenty of clothing. Chalk it up to last minute jitters. The Gods of Age-based Embarrassment decided to flip my switch one more time just as some aspiring northbound AT thru-hikers passed by, so I ran off into the bushes shivering, leaving my pack and half-extended trekking poles strewn on the ground. When I came back, California was talking to an aspiring AT thru-hiker with a GIANT pack who looked to be in his early 50s. He must have had 50 pounds of gear. He said that he was thru-hiking the AT this year and had plans to thru-hike both the Pacific Crest and Continental Divide Trails next year. I mentally winced a little just hearing this and internally thought “one trail at a time buddy; let’s see how you do with this one!” But, at the same time I know that my experience is not everyone’s experience, and I would never, ever want to stifle anyone’s ambition. Honestly, he’ll probably do it. Desire, determination, and a belief that you can do something are often the most important aspects of success. I hope he can hold on to his desire and realize that dream, if it is still the same dream when his AT journey ends.
I wished them both well and a good journey, then excused myself to get hiking, mostly so I could warm up. It is a short hike southbound on the AT up Springer Mountain to where the Benton MacKaye Trail begins, just before the famous plaque marking the beginning of the Appalachian Trail. The BMT has its own plaque, also set in stone, which is nice because there is absolutely nothing marking the northern terminus other than a blaze that could be any other blaze along the trail. The BMT plaque is not immediately at the beginning of the trail. You have to leave the junction with the AT and walk a short way to get to it. While the monuments on the trail are elusive and coy, the climbs are just the opposite. I would discover that they largely exist in your face and go straight up and down without hiding behind switchbacks. I read the plaque and absorbed the moment. The journey had officially begun.
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